Author Archives: amardeep

Terrorism or High-Tech Consulting? Hmm, tough choice

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I had one of those ‘whaaaaaat?’ moments reading the coverage of the latest arrests in the Mumbai 7/11 blasts investigation. Faisal and Muzamil Shaikh are brothers; Faisal is thought to have arranged for several others accused of conspiracy in the bombings to go to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) training camps across the border in Pakistan. It seems unclear exactly what Muzamil’s role was, though this paragraph in the Times article does contain a surprising detail:

Faisal Shaikh, the police said, appeared to have organized the passage of the others to Pakistan for military training. Muzamil Shaikh, on the other hand, while eager to follow his brother into a radical Islamist group, seems to have had second thoughts after being offered a position at Oracle. He had been employed on a contract basis, said a police officer who was part of the interrogations, pending the completion of company training. (link)

This is the first time I’ve heard of someone not in a movie choosing between life as a murderer, driven by a distorted kind of religious ideology, and life as a highly-paid employee in a blue-ribbon multinational corporation.

I’m also trying to parse Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s statements on Friday regarding the arrests so far:

Notwithstanding India’s assertions about the Lashker-e-Taiba’s (LeT) involvement in major terrorist strikes like the July 11 blasts in Mumbai, Pakistan has said it has no “prejudicial” evidence against the group.

Pointing out that the LeT was banned in his country, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said, “We donÂ’t see any evidence of their activity thatÂ’s prejudicial.” (link)

What does he mean exactly by “prejudicial evidence”? Since the suspects have confessed to training in Pakistani territory, you would think that would be “dispositive” — at least on the question of whether Pakistan is doing enough to clamp down on the LeT. Perhaps he’s specifically referring to the 7/11 blasts? Even if so, this is a frustrating response: a more responsible thing to do would be to send troops to Muzaffarabad and surrounding areas, and destroy any camps that are still operating. A more responsible thing to say would be, “sorry.” Continue reading →

ABCDownloaders: A Survey, of sorts

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A comment on my Hindi film music post from Kush Tandon earlier in the week got me thinking:

Where do you buy India/ Bollywood music in electronic from? I have browsed Rhapsody, they seem decent. I could not find much on iTunes. Is there some other place too?

Or is it all pirated and/ or through buddies?

No one responded to the comment at the time — is it because everyone is in fact downloading pirated desi music and films over the internet, and they’re not sure they should admit it?

There are a number of good explanations for why downloading is popular. First, not everyone lives near an Indo-Pak grocery/music store, and a lot of Desi stores aren’t very serious about getting current music, or a broad range of it. Second, so much of the music is kind of crappy and derivative to begin with (Hindi film producers often borrow bass-lines and samples from western or Arabic pop songs), so why worry about making sure the artist is adequately paid for his or her work?

Third, there’s never been any attempt from Indian record and film companies to crack down on downloads of their stuff in the diaspora. Grocery/music/video stores that sell pirated material are often raided, but there’s no desi equivalent of the RIAA or MPAA suing online pirates, or shutting down BitTorrent/filesharing sites. (Note: Kazaa just settled with American record companies for $100 million.)

And finally, there’s no desi equivalent of Itunes, where you can legally buy MP3 singles from CDs and be assured that your money is going to the label and the artist who made the music (any entrepeneurs out there? go for it, buddy).

What are your thoughts on piracy? Do you yourself download pirated music (note: if you normally use your real name in comments, here I would recommend an alias)? What is your “piracy to legal consumption” ratio? Would you spend $1.00 a song if a desi version of Itunes were available? Continue reading →

Temper Tantrums at the WTO

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Bernard Gordon at the Wall Street Journal criticizes India’s trade representative, Kamal Nath, in a recent Op-Ed:

Surprise, surprise, the WTO talks in Geneva are “suspended.” But in truth, hardly a surprise, since in May France’s agricultural minister said, “I would prefer that the negotiations fail rather than . . . raise questions about . . . agriculture.” At the G-8 summit this month President Jacques Chirac backed him up: “Only Europe has moved [and] gone to the extreme limits.”

Both were responding to America’s insistence that Europe do more to match its offer to cut farm subsidies — in order to break the logjam at the heart of the now-collapsed Doha Round. But Europe had a partner in its “my way or the highway” approach. India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, presumably speaking for the developing nations, said more “flexibility” was needed, and then gave his definition of the word: “We can’t negotiate subsistence and livelihood . . . we should not even be asked to do that.”

Mr. Nath had walked out of earlier trade talks, arguing “there was no point” in continuing, which prompted the press at home to fault him for throwing a “temper tantrum.” Not a bad label in this case, since India in 2004 accounted for less than 1% of world trade. And speaking after the collapse, which Mr. Nath characterized as “between intensive care and the crematorium,” he sharply singled out the U.S. as the sole culprit: the “mind-set” of the Americans was “inverted . . . they’re thinking only of market access.” (link; subscription required)

(Note that he’s not inventing the phrase “temper tantrum,” only citing the Indian media’s use of the term approvingly.) Gordon goes on to try and poke holes in Nath’s criticism of the U.S. for the fact that the Doha round has gone aground. Gordon mentions that the Brazil representative was actually more critical of Europe than the U.S., and cites President Bush’s promise to reduce U.S. farm subsidies by 60% in keeping with the opening of U.S. markets.

While the intricacies of world trade agreements and the workings of the WTO are, admittedly, not my area of expertise, one does note that Kamal Nath actually has plenty of company in blaming the U.S. primarily for the collapse of the talks. Continue reading →

Ismat Chughtai’s Short Stories

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Though her life wasn’t as drastically messed up as that of her friend and contemporary, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai was definitely a born rebel. She lived her life the way she wanted, and wrote the truth in her many stories, novels, and nonfiction essays. ismat chughtai.jpg

Chughtai’s most famous story is “Lihaf” (The Quilt), which deals with a lesbian encounter within an all-woman setting (Zenana) in a traditional Muslim household. It’s a funny and scandalous story (read it here), but actually, my favorite short story by Chughtai is called “Sacred Duty.” I came across it in a recent collection called The Quilt and Other Stories. It’s been beautifully translated by Tahira Naqvi, who has been Chughtai’s committed translator and one of her great champions.

“Sacred Duty” is not online anywhere, so perhaps I should briefly summarize it and quote a little. Samina, who comes from a respectable Muslim family in Delhi, is engaged to be married to a respectable Muslim boy. However, the day before her wedding she runs off with her boyfriend with Tashar Trivedi, a Hindu whose family lives in Allahabad. Samina accompanies Tashar to Allahabad, where converts to Hinduism and is married to Tashar in a Hindu ceremony. When her parents get Samina’s note explaining her disappearance, her mother’s first reaction (the story is told from her parents’ perspective) is “Let’s go to Allahabad and shoot them both!” Lovely. Continue reading →

Mumbai Blasts Update: Putting the Pieces Together

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I’ve been trying to make sense of the progress of the Mumbai blasts investigation, and it’s not easy going. The latest news is the arrest of a local Mumbai man named Tanvir Ansari. Ansari is a traditional Muslim healer who practices ‘Unani’ healing in Mumbai. The Mumbai Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) claims he went to Pakistan in 2004, where he received training in bomb-making. He also has a criminal record — for an earlier arrest for possessing an AK-47 from some years ago.

Ansari’s arrest has led to the arrest of two associates, Suhail Sheikh and Jameer Ahmed. Like Ansari, Jameer Ahmed seems pretty unassuming: he owns a key shop in Mumbai city. Suhail Sheikh lives in Pune; I haven’t been able to find out what he does for a living.

Last week, the arrest of a man in Kenya is looking a little confusing. The man arrested there is not Said Abdul Karim (‘Tunda’), but a British national of Nigerian descent named Ismoila Olatunde Rufai. Rufai is still wanted by Kenyan police on suspicion of involvement with terrorism, but he’s not the person the Indian government was looking for. ‘Tunda’ worked for Dawood Ibrahim, and is known to have lost a hand from a bomb-making accident. Ismoila Rufai has no connection to ‘D’, and has both hands intact.

The three men arrested earlier have similarly complex identities (one of them had even worked as a police informer!). Two are Bihari villagers, and one lives in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay). Though one of the three has stated that he received training at an LeT camp in Pakistan, police are suggesting their main contacts are in Nepal and Bangladesh, and only “indirectly” in Pakistan. (This last point is somewhat vague in the news reports I’ve read.)

For columnist Rudroneel Ghosh at India Enews, the pattern of arrests thus far just doesn’t add up, which could mean one of two things: Continue reading →

Musafir, A Rajasthani Band; and Philly Meetup?

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Musafir is a band from Rajasthan (and France!) who just performed with A.R. Rahman in Hollywood, California last week. This week (Wednesday), they’re coming to the prestigious Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, to headline a show with local DJs Darshana and Chetana Borah in a supporting role.musafir band.jpg

According to the product review at Amazon, Musafir originally formed with the idea of reconnecting European Gypsy (Roma) music with the South Asian folk music it derived from hundreds of years ago. (There is very strong linguistic evidence that the primary language spoken by the Roma, Romany, has specifically Indic roots. According to Wikipedia, Punjabi is the strongest influence.)

But in recent years, Musafir appears to have moved away from the “Gypsy” theme, and now they seem to perform a potpourri of traditional Rajasthani folk styles (with a little filmi music thrown in for good measure). From what I’ve heard it isn’t clear that Musafir is necessarily “authentic,” but whatever they are, they have been doing a good job in recent years entertaining music festival crowds in the U.S. and Canada, judging from notices here, here, and here (that last link has a couple of MP3s available).

Unfortunately, none of Musafir’s music appears to be available via ITunes, though you can listen to songs for free at Rhapsody, as well as here and here. (The song available at the Kimmel Center website actually comes from the unrelated Hindi film Musafir; a bizarre mistake.) Continue reading →

Summer Hindi Film Music: “Omkara” Stands Out

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I found Krrish and Fanaa entertaining enough to watch, though I instantly forgot the songs to both films, and haven’t had reason to go back for a second listen. I’ve also been sampling some of the other Hindi film music this summer via Raaga, and with a couple of exceptions the songs all sound like they were produced by robots who hate music. The Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna songs in particular are atrociously bad. (Kabhi Repeat Naa Karna.) omkara still3.jpg

One big exception from what I’ve heard are the songs to Omkara, the new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello by Vishal Bhardwaj. Bhardwaj directed another rendition of Shakespeare in Maqbool (Macbeth). Maqbool (Irfan Khan, Tabu, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri) was artfully done and well-acted, though I was a little confused about the obsessive focus on religion in the film. In Omkara, Bhardwaj is working as both director and music director, and the soundtrack benefits from the close attention to detail he evidently paid to it. The title track (“Omkara”), with Sukhwinder Singh’s vocals, is wonderful: it has that early A.R. Rahman happiness, the “Chaiya Chaiya” magic: Sukhwinder has a lot of power in his voice, and this tune celebrating the warrior “Omkara” allows it to come through. “Beedi” is also quite catchy — with a Qawwali sound — as is “Naina” (with vocals by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan). I’m a little less enthusiastic about the album’s slow songs, “Jag Ja,” and “O Saathi Re,” though they are still good — folksy and semi-classical rather than simply slow and pseudo-emotional (as in most Bollywood slow songs these days).

In short: sounds like A.R. Rahman, but much better than Rahman has been lately. Continue reading →

Sonia, Congress Stop Jag Mundhra Biopic

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Sometimes blogging lands you up in funny places. SM’s own Abhi and Patrix from Desipundit were recently quoted in an excellent San Francisco Chronicle regarding the new Indian comic books. A mystery man named “Ennis Singh Mutinywale” was quoted all over the place after dropping this bombshell. Manish Vij had, as mentioned earlier, a quality piece in Salon after the Mumbai blasts. And a number of bloggers (naturally) were quoted in mainstream media coverage of the Indian blog ban — not surprising since several prominent desi bloggers are also professional journalists.

Today it was my turn, albeit in a smaller way — the Times of London called for a comment on Sonia Gandhi’s attempt to suppress Jag Mundhra’s planned biopic about her (starring Monica “Mary Magdalene” Belluci as the young Sonia Gandhi). I blogged about it two months ago, and somehow that turned into this:

Despite priding itself on a constitution that guarantees freedom of expression, India has a history of censorship. It was the first country to ban Salman RushdieÂ’s The Satanic Verses and the Central Board of Film Certification regularly uses the fear of civil unrest between its Hindu and Muslim communities to demand cuts from directors or to keep certain films out of cinemas. Only yesterday, a ban was lifted on 17 websites that ministers claimed were fanning religious hatred after the bomb blasts in Bombay on July 11.

Amardeep Singh, assistant professor of English at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, was not surprised by Mrs GandhiÂ’s attempts to stop the film. “There is a knee-jerk censoriousness in Indian politics and it is a sad reaction to try to suppress the film before it has even been produced,” he said. “It is meant to be a respectful biopic, but I think theyÂ’re just nervous because the director has a reputation for the unsavoury.” (link)

Admittedly, that last statement was pure speculation on my part (one always wishes the reporter quoted the other thing you said…). But this censorship problem is, as Dilip D’Souza has ably argued, a systemic problem we need to be continually vigilant about. India would be a better place if the default were to allow people to have their say rather than block, ban, and censor. (And it’s not just a Congress Party thing; the BJP were no slouches when it came to censoring views they weren’t happy about.)

Sadly, the filmmakers here have apparently decided to shelve the film rather than insist on their right to make it. Continue reading →

Carrie and Suj

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carrie suj.jpg Time Magazine (hat tip: Julie) this week has a story about a couple who got married in a Hindu ceremony recently in upstate New York, Carrie and Sujeet. But this isn’t your ordinary cross-cultural wedding — both Carrie and Sujeet have Down Syndrome. Carrie and Sujeet are the first generation of DS individuals to be healthy and functional enough to consider marrying. They’ve benefited from full social assimilation, new therapies, and close medical attention that mitigates the health complications of DS:

This generation of young adults with DS has shattered old ideas about what is possible for people who carry an extra 21st chromosome in their cells–the cause of DS–and what opportunities society owes them. They came of age in an era of early-intervention programs to spur physical and mental development–Desai began one at 7 weeks. Once in school, they were included in regular classrooms when possible and were offered tutoring and special classes when needed. Both bride and groom are high school graduates. Just as critical, this generation has benefited from medical care addressing the heart and gastrointestinal defects, eye problems, thyroid issues, obesity and other health woes that, for reasons that are poorly understood, often tag along with mental retardation as part of Down syndrome. The result: their average expected life span has doubled, from 25 in 1983 to 56 today.(link)

Carrie and Sujeet met, started dating, and he popped the question publicly after performing at a music recital. I think the whole thing is pretty wonderful. Check out Sujeet’s home page, which has video footage of him proposing and pictures. And Carrie has a website too. Also, Wikipedia on Down Syndrome for more on the science of the genetic condition. Continue reading →

On the Radio Tonight: Class relations in India

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A heads-up: Radio Open Source is doing a special show on class relations in India tonight at 7pm Eastern Time. It’s partly inspired by the recent Pankaj Mishra Op-Ed we discussed a little last week, which challenged the myth of the booming “new India.”

This isn’t more “negative” talk about India’s poverty or backwardness. I talked to the show’s producer (Robin) a bit on the phone last week, and what I got from her is that they don’t really want to do either a “negative” or “positive” spin on India. They also don’t want to throw around a lot of general economic statistics (GDP, economic growth indicators, etc.), since those things don’t tell you very much about how and whether people’s lives have been affected by the changes that have been occurring since the early 1990s. Rather, they simply want to explore the changes socially, culturally, and historically, and understand it as realistically and completely as possible. And to do that, they want illustrative anecdotes and first hand testimony from a range of sources and perspectives.

It’s a very noble and unusual approach for a radio show to take, and I’ll be listening in to see how it goes. ROS is unique in that they often take comments posted on the blog and cite them in the on-air discussion. So if you have something to say on this topic, I suggest you go to their site and leave some comments; they might quote you on the air.

Incidentally, if you miss the show, they generally put up podcasts a few days after the show airs. Continue reading →